Lots of fun over at

Lots of fun over at my fellow Ambloggers. Meera and Arref are discussing the nature of Trump. Meera considers it a Primal power, but on the other hand Arref has a slightly different view. Meera also makes an interesting observation on the Jewel of Judgement and Pattern-drawing.. By the way, I really wish I had a website where I could run cgi and stuff. Moveable type gives Meera a flexibility that I can only envy.
And then there is Turn of a Friendly Die. Ginger (aka Immigration Lass) has a campaign/scenario starter which I mention here because it its first
couple of paragraphs, it has a brilliant idea, even more important, I think, than the rest of her scenario (although I like that too.)
How, with hundreds or thousands of years available to them, have the Amberites NOT managed to fill the multiverse with children like an immortal family of Von Neumann Machines? Especially given that Chaos has its own solution to the problem of overpopulations…the inherent dangerous nature of the other pole of reality.
The answer HAS to be the Pattern. Ginger suggests that the Pattern inhibited fertility in the Amberites. However, with the redraw of the Pattern at the end of Patternfall, this fertility inhibition might be lifted. I like this! It even explains a post second series game where the Amberites suddenly have a bunch of children since Patternfall…which is practically the default setting for an Amber game. Of COURSE they are mostly born since Patternfall, because only since then has the fertility been high enough to ensure a clutch of children.
Arref, in conversations with me, revealed that his thought on the matter was that it was Oberon’s doing, to keep his children from raising substantial numbers of offspring to challenge him…and that the elders had to work around and defeat this reduction in fertility in their own ways.
An alternate idea, if you like sentient Patterns, is that, following the Patternfall War, the Pattern decided of its own accord to increase fertility amongst its scions–to compete with and provide defense against a Courts of Chaos which was now more active on the scene. A peculiar thought occurs to me of Oberon communing with the Pattern (or Dworkin!). “I need a few more children, this time on Faiella. They’d make good fighters, perhaps more rounded than Cymnea’s brood…and perhaps less liable to cause us problems.”

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A Reality-Based Blog for Paul Weimer's interests, including but not limited to Science and F/SF, books, Movies, NFL Football, Role Playing Games, Photography, and why 6*9=42. "Living in the Science Fiction Present", Proudly supporting Anti-Mundane SF, and aware of all internet traditions! I'm just this guy, you know?